


Weeks Out Of The End Of The World

by MurphysLaw



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, If You Squint - Freeform, Jasper/Maia, Mentioned: - Freeform, Post Perverse Instantiation Part Two, Post Season 3 Finale, Raven/Finn - Freeform, past Monty/Jasper can be seen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 01:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7078603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MurphysLaw/pseuds/MurphysLaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worlds got 24 weeks left, Jasper can't help think this isn't the best time to start a relationship. Everyone else seems to disagree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weeks Out Of The End Of The World

_All important decisions had a lever_ , decided Jasper.

It was a lever which sent one hundred disposable teenage criminals to the ground to see if the planet they abandoned was survivable.

It was a lever which made his best friend a murder, and killed Maia. Swelled up her throat so she died gasping and clawing for air while all around her everyone she ever knew lost their life with her.

Even when he killed those grounders, when the Earth finally turned him into a monster, it was with a switch. And what's a switch but a small lever?

_So_ , Jasper concludes, looking at the girl- no women, they were no longer the children who laughed and smiled. They were adults who grew up too quickly, terrified of death now it wasn't out an airlock. _This couldn't be a very important decision._

Except that didn't explain why his breathing was laboured and his hands shaking. All he could see was her.

Her with her dark hair and perfect skin and a sly smile on her face which made his heart thump painfully in his chest.

"Then what are you waiting for?" It should be teasing, almost a dare. But there wasn't enough time left for that.

She was so close. Waiting. It was his choice.

This wasn't an important decision.

It was his decision.

Jasper Jordan leant forward and kissed her.

*

The night was warm. Winter had long since past. When they had first crashed landed, the drizzle filled days plummeted into the minus once the sun left the sheet grey sky. They had clung to each other under mountains of blankets as frost settled on the outside of the tent.

Him and Monty had slept in the same bed, arms wrapped around each other. Like they used to in the ark, before they got arrested and separated.

Now Monty had Harper, and they had their own ways of keeping warm. Instead he had his empty bed in a tent full of other teenagers.

The way they smiled and joked and laughed. Like they haven't been in an endless fight for survival, that didn't leave time to live. Like they didn't just have happiness ripped away from them, and left them hollow. Like the world wasn't trying to break them. (Like it hadn't already broken some of them.) But it was worse than that. It reminded of who he was before.

Rather than be in there, where each easy smile was a stab in the gut and a flash back to a time that should remain buried, Jasper sat outside, alone and by the fire.

There it was easy to lose himself in the flames as they danced towards the night sky. All yellow and red and orange. He thought it would be nice to get a good buzz going on and watch them. He could ask Monty to join- it'll be like the old days.

"The old days can't come back." He said it out loud. He wasn't sure why. No one else was around to hear it. Just his ragged voice in the warm night air.

He wanted them to. Every time he shut his eyes he hoped he would wake up in the Ark. Before they got arrested. Before girls and secrets. Before everything went wrong.

Quickly, he cut of that line of thought before it could get any further. It did no good to dwell on what if's. Too many painful memories. It seemed whichever way he looked he saw a memory he wanted to forget.

While Jasper thought, the fire in front of him died down. Officially, it wasn't meant to go out- keeping a fire going is a lot easier than making a new one- but the night guards often neglected this duty, claiming rain when their superior complained. And it wasn't Jasper's job, so he couldn't bring himself to care.

Even something as strong as fire died.

Anyway, he was only here because he had no where better to go.

As if reading his thoughts, the main door into the ship opened a crack. A slim figure slipped out and began to limp towards him. Jasper knew who it was before they came close enough the be seen by the weak light of the fire.

Raven Reyes.

She was clad in her tight jeans and tank top. Work wear. She wasn't yet changed for bed, and Jasper wondered how she managed to work such long days. Most were in bed by this time. Whether they were asleep or lying awake with images like stains clouding their mind.

The light from the flames gave her face a sharp look and a golden glow. Not for the first time Jasper thought she was beautiful.

"Aren't you cold?" He asked, trying to sound interested, concerned. Anything than the emptiness he felt. The flames were now low, and little heat was being produced. Nowhere near the all year heating of the ark.

"Freakin' freezing. So get your ass up and inside before Arkadia loses their best mechanic." And Jasper couldn't say no. Not when she had that smile on her face.

Raven's real smile. Not the one A.L.I.E. made her wear, the just on the surface, no meaning smile. But her smile. The one that was rare, but when it came it light up the whole Earth. It didn't forget her pain, but it made you forget yours. It made his legs go weak and his heart hurt. Made him feel something he swore he wouldn't feel again. Not after Maia.

He stood up, knees sore from sitting so long. "Then lead the way."  

After all, the Ark couldn't lose Raven. And Jasper was beginning to think neither could he.

*

Raven didn't have a bedroom.

Or, at least, she didn't have one Jasper knew about. Most probably, she had been placed in the eighteen plus women single tent. But, like him, she had despised it and moved out. But unlike Jasper she had somewhere to go.

Her workshop. Not that she saw it as that. It would always be Sinclair's in her mind.

Piles of spare parts and screwdrivers and old bits of wire lay high on every surface in the room. Computer screen lined on wall, but they were off for the day, sans one, which flashed lazily in the corner. Half fixed- or maybe half broken- gadgets lay open, their contents spilling out.

And in the corner opposite the computer screens ,there lay a camp bed. A mess of blankets and pillows lay on it. Raven, ignoring the machinery she had spent all day on, limped straight for it.

"Look what I managed to score." She pulled out an old self inflating sleeping mat. Jasper hurried after her.

"How did you get this?" He meant to sound thankful, not so damn weary.  

"If I said Miller?" said Raven, with that teasing look on her face.

"I would tell you to put it back where ever his sticky fingers got it from."

"What if I said Abby?" she tried again. Rolling his eyes, Jasper took the mat off her and lay it out on the ground next to her bed. Better than the hard floor that he could never seem to get used to.

"How about you don't tell me where it's from so I don't have to worry about you being floated for me?" he suggested. Worry- that was something he had his fair share of. He missed not being able to worry. To be sure everything was going to be OK, that someone else was going to work it all out for them.

Raven threw him a pillow, and, astounding himself, he caught it. It ripped him out of his thoughts.

"They don't float people anymore." She reminded him. "Now turn around, I'm getting changed."

Jasper turned so his back was facing her. He even closed his eyes for good measure. He hadn't brought any spare clothes. Instead, he pulled down his trousers so he was just in his pants and top. Unlike most of the teens in his tent, he didn't take off his top. He couldn't look at his scar. And he couldn't let Raven see it.

People- from the teenagers that shared his tent, to his colleagues, to the remaining 100- thought he was sleeping with Raven. He heard them wondering how someone as fucked up as him got someone as hot as her. He didn't tell them someone as fucked up as him didn't get anyone.

"Oh yes. Being locked up is so much better than dying." Sarcasm was one of those things that became easier the worse you felt.

Behind him, Raven snorted. He could hear her pulling her top off, the soft sound of fabric against skin. "At least you're alive."

Jasper thought back to the rigorously structured days where it was just him and his psycho roommate (dead now, he never found out how) and those four alls which threatened to crush him. Just counting identical day after day in till his hearing. In till his death. He still had three years left when they sent him to the ground. He was pretty sure he wasn't going to make it. He was also pretty sure that wasn't what Raven meant.

But he didn't want to talk about it. Not today. Maybe not ever.

Realising Raven wanted an answer, the teen shrugged, his skinny shoulders raising and lowering. "But I might as well be." She didn't answer that. Jasper didn't care.

"You can turn back around now." Slowly Jasper faced her. She was standing proud just in her paints and a very tight tank top. She wasn't ashamed of her body. In fact, it was for his sake she asked him to turn around. She knew it made him feel uncomfortable if she didn't. She sat down on the edge of the bed and began to unclip her brace.

When he was younger, he'd always imagined one day he'll see a girl like that. It didn't live up to the fantasy. Nothing did.

Coping her, Jasper lay on his own bed, pulling a spare blanket down to cover his bare legs. It was cold on the metal floor, but with the mat beneath him it was at least comfortable.

"You should bring your sleeping bag next time." Raven's voice was casual, but it sent Jasper's heart beating like a train.

"Are you asking me to move in?" He tried joking. He pretended it worked.

Her calloused hand touched his shoulder, though Jasper wasn't sure if he imagined it, but he refused to open his eyes in case it shattered the illusion.

"What? Do you like where you're sleeping now?" Jasper thought he heard a hint of worry in her voice. But that couldn't be right. Raven wasn't scared of anything. (Except four months on the ground told Jasper different.)

He didn't reply, unsure what to say. Shouldn't a choice like this have a lever? To kill or not to kill. To destroy or die. He could save everyone.

Eventually Raven sighed and turned off the light. Even though his closed eyelids he saw the room plunge into darkness.

"Think about it goggles." There was no apology about being so forwards, nor a demands that said he had to make up his mind. Just three words and a nickname no one had used in a long time.

By the morning he made up his mind.

*

The rumours got worse after that.

Even just eating lunch with Monty between a shift became about that. Since the City of Light- since he stabbed the most important boy in his life with a screwdriver- they had been slowly and tentatively building their friendship back up. Monty would always be his best friend, but now it was beginning to feel like it again.

"So," Monty grinned, placing the metal tray on the table. It consisted of unknown meat stew and nuts of the non-hallucinogenic type. The newly sewn crops were not ready to harvest yet. Something called corn that Brian was highly enthusiastic about.

Life in Arkadia had settled down. Everyone now had a job that was based on their qualifications from the ark. While Monty had got  a job in engineering, Jasper somehow managed to get a job testing fertilisers, even though he got arrested before he was anywhere near finishing his chemistry course. He suspected Abby had put a good word in for him. And while that sort of thing hadn't been on his radar in space, on the ground he found he loved it. Hard work kept his mind busy.

Suddenly coming back to himself, Jasper realised Monty had been talking to him. "What?" he blurted out. Monty rolled his eyes, used to his best friend scattered brain.

"I was asking if you and Raven where now a thing?" Monty wriggled his eyebrows and used the kind of voice which said he thought he already knew the answer to that.

"It's not like that."

"Sure. You just moved in after sleeping together for the last month." He used that voice about Octavia and Maia too. But O had gone psycho and Maia died. (Chocking. No air. Could of saved her. Saved them all.)

"We're not sleeping together." It came out sharper than he intended, and Monty's face fell. They were reconnecting, but it wasn't the same as before. It would never be the same.

"Sorry man. You know I was joking right?" And Jasper could see the pain in Monty's big eyes and felt a thousand times worse. He gave his best friend one of those forced smiles that always seemed to work. Monty should of easily seen though it. But maybe he just wanted to believe he was OK. That he was better. That he was the same boy that smiled just because he was alive.

Monty returned it. Then his eyes grew fond. "Do you remember when we were young and mum and your dad thought we were going to get married when we grew up?"

Talking about the past was a bad idea. But it was common ground, and this was the first time Jasper had heard Monty mention his mum since he deleted her. So he kept that painted smile on and played along. "Thought we would never split up."

_They got everything wrong didn't they? Me and Monty never fell in love._ Except that was a lie to. Monty carried on.

"And now look at us. I've got a girlfriend, you have a-" Jasper gave him a look, and Monty quickly back tracked, "-a Raven."

Jasper snorted. "No one has Raven."

Monty laughed. A real laugh. Warm and bright and joyful. It sent Jasper right back to the Ark. Someone else's medicine spreading though his veins, making everything alright for a while. Just him and Monty and the Earthrise. It wasn't till Monty touched his shoulder, concern in his face, that Jasper realised he was crying. He couldn't keep it in anymore.

"Are you OK?" Monty asked anxiously, and Jasper thought that was a pretty dumb question. But when he opened his mouth that wasn't what came out.

"I never thought I would end up here, like this." Tears were still fogging up his eyes, but Monty's face was clear.

"None of us did." Monty squeezed his shoulders, lightly, and Jasper blinked trying to clear up his vision. His best friend said it like it was a good thing, but Jasper knew better. For a moment they sat like that. Then Monty broke it.

"I've got to get back to work." He removed his hand, and Jasper immediately missed it. He picked up his tray, but he didn't leave. "Jasper?"

Jasper looked up from his own food tray. He hadn't eaten any of it but nobody else knew that. "Yeah?"

"I know you like Raven." Jasper opened his mouth, but Monty lifted his finger up to silence him. "But the world is about to end, so I'll hurry up about it."

"The world's always ending."

It wasn't till later that Jasper realised that wasn't what he said. The Monty's weird look wasn't for no reason.

_The world's already ended._

*

"Hey roomie." Jasper jumped. He was in the infirmary. Again. But Raven wasn't usually there.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, maybe a bit rudely. But she didn't notice. Or didn't comment.

"Hello to you too Raven." she put on a low voice that sounded nothing like him at all. More like a fog horn than a teenage boy.

"Needs some work." Raven nodded.

"Definitely," she agreed. Jasper doubted she'll do anything about it though. "Now what are you in for?"

"I asked you that first!" He complained. Raven shrugged her shoulders.

"But _you_ didn't say hello. Now spill."

Jasper sighed. She had a point even if it did use five year old logic. But so did his. And he was going to find out why she was here even if he had to bribe Abby.

"I hit my head standing up. Nothing big. But _Andro_ -" Jasper practically spat out his name, and Raven smirked at Jasper's hatred for his boss. "- thought I had been drinking and sent me to be checked out."

Raven shot him a sympathetic smile. "You got a bitch of a boss."

"Well he's testing animal shit like the rest of us." Clearly, this was a thought that Jasper had a lot to cheer himself up.

"Way to make your job sound sexy." She leant over the bed gap and ruffled Jasper's hair. It had months of growth, but it still wasn't as long as when Raven first met him. Jasper had been planning on cutting it, but Raven had stolen his knife in till he surrender.

"Now what about you?" Raven suddenly looked shifty and Jasper felt like he'd been plunged in ice water. He knew that feeling- dread. Seeing his face, Raven quickly tried to reassure him.

"Just an operation. Low risk. Just to make my leg hurt less."

"Low risk? Your voice doesn't sound low risk." He said it slowly, carefully making sure it didn't shake.

"OK. Maybe not low risk." Jasper knew she was in pain. And it had been getting worse since A.L.I.E. left her head.

"You should of told me." He could imagine himself panicking when he got to the workshop after his job and her not being there. Worrying in till he goes to Abby and her telling him there had been a complication.

"I know. I just didn't want to worry you. Anyway, times running out, why would it matter if it goes wrong?" The question hung in the air. Jasper had a million different answers. But only one is important.

"We've only just became roommates." He prayed Raven would get it. Read between the lines he kept up.

She smiled sadly, and touched his hand. This time he knew he wasn't imagining it. "You better be here when I get out."

Jasper closed his hand round hers. He could read between the lines. Their own secret language of words they weren't ready to say. (Except Raven could die today under the knife. Or Jasper could get hit by a vehicle on the fields. Or in four months time the planet could get covered in radiation.)

Then Abby came over and their hands sprang apart, guiltily. But not before she noticed and gave them that knowing look that everyone was so fond of giving them. Jasper wondered if she had been giving Raven advice as well. Just thinking about some of it caused Jasper to blush.

"Raven, are you ready?" Raven gave the doctor one of her carefree smiles.

"I was born ready." And then she was being wheeled away and all he could do was watch. Their words (not last words, she was going to come back) still echoing in his head.

_I need you._

_I need you too._

*

"Do you miss it?" The words were spoken into the black but were meant for the girl in the bed next to his. They were barely a whisper, but he know she'll hear.

"No." Raven's voice was strong, but not certain. You couldn't regret no pain, no loss, no suffering.

"I miss it." Wistfully. She didn't reply. All he could hear was her breathing. In, out, in, out. He didn't know what she wanted, so he did what he needed (even though he didn't want to).

"I was free there. I could think. See the world as everyone else does. Something beautiful. Everything- the pain, the anger- all of it was just gone."

"You need pain and anger to survive." She was sure of this one. But Jasper disagreed.

"No. It's what kills you in the end." _Just look at Finn. All his pain got him was a knife in a gut from the girl he loved._ Not that he'll say that to Raven. Not while she had that pendant hanging from her neck. Not ever.

Silence fell again. Except that wasn't quite right. The constant hum of machinery that left the one hundred feel so alone in the forest without it was back. A lullaby. But it stopped working, from the moment the spear pierced his chest.

"Why did you say yes?" And there is was, the question he never wanted to answer, and the one he needed to. It held the truth about him.

"Did you hear me before? I remember making it pretty clear." But Raven was smarter than that. After all, she was a genius.

"That was A.L.I.E.'s version of events." she insisted.

"Doesn't make it not true."

"I don't believe that." She had so much faith in the ex-druggy turned alcoholic. It would be laughable if he didn't have double that faith back.

He sat up. Raven stayed laying back- she still couldn't move properly so soon after the surgery. He might as well get ready to leave. It's not like Raven would want him here after he told her the truth.

"I gave up. She whispered horrible things into my ear and I just couldn't anymore. They were the truth. Everything she said. And that was worse. And I gave up." He was defending himself and he didn't know why. Tears began streaming down his face and he couldn't stop them. "They were punching me. But that was nothing. Not against her hissings. They got into my brain. And I couldn't. I just gave up."

He jumped as Raven's arm snaked round his shoulders. He hadn't been aware she moved, but it must of hurt her. Carefully, she pulled him close. He heard her hiss as she jarred her back.

"Why are you-" _hurting yourself for me? Comforting me? Not kicking me out now you've seen how disgustingly weak I am?_ "I'm a coward."

"So?" she asked. Jasper just echoed it back. Never did he imagine this scenario.

"Abby gave in. So did Kane, and Jackson and the whole of freakin' Arkadia. Not to mention Polis. Hell, even _I_ did."

Jasper shook his head, but stopped in his futile efforts to get away. He didn't see the smile tug on the corners of Raven's mouth. "You- _they_ \- had a reason."

Raven snorted. Her breathing was messing with his hair. "So did you."

And Jasper didn't have an answer for that. So they sat like that for a while. At some point Jasper leant his head back onto her shoulder. In the dark, Jasper could pretend they were the last two humans left in the world.

*

Jasper's skin was staying stubbornly pale. Everyone else's- Monty's, Raven's, Abby's- had all got darker from the bright sunlight which now flooded through the fields from dawn to dusk. Which turned out was a long time.

Logically, Jasper knew that as it edged towards summer the days would get longer and longer but there would be no night if it kept this up.

And his skin would continue on its bright pink path. And it wasn't like Andro was going to let him off work because his skin was allergic to sunlight. He'd taken to wearing clothing that covered all his skin, and while he sweated so much he was drenched by the end of the day, at least his skin didn't hurt to touch.

"Why is it always me?" complained Jasper.

"Hmmm?" said Raven, her mind on the apparatus in front of her. It was his day off, not hers.

"It wouldn't matter if you were allergic because you spend the whole day inside." He carried on, not that bothered that she wasn't listening to him moaning.

"You're just a mutant." said Raven, offhandedly. Jasper's frown depended.

"That's practically what Abby said. Melanin in my skin or something." Honestly, her whole explanation baffled him, but the general gist was he had to stay out the sun.

"Jasper." Raven said sternly. Jasper looked up guiltily. At seeing his expression, her face softened. "It's not that I'm not interested. It's just Clarke sounded pretty urgent. You know 13 weeks left and all."

Jasper nodded, standing up. He could say 13 weeks was lots of time. That they did a hell of a lot in the first month on the Earth. But he didn't. Instead, he spent his efforts trying not to feel rejected. After all you can't blame someone picking the world over your whining.

"I'll just leave." He shuffled towards the door.

"Jas." They both paused. She hadn't called him that before. Goggles and roomie but not Jas. She shook it off. "I want you to stay-"

"But you've got the world to save." Then he grinned. Fake. His whole body felt empty because she was busy. "Don't worry. Monty has a lot of me complaining to catch up on."

He left the room and the smile slid off his face.

He couldn't bring himself to care about the world.

*

Jasper doubted there was anything more beautiful in the world than the sunrise seen from the top of the fallen Ark. (Accept Raven, but that sounded so unbelievably corny that he wouldn't dare voice it out loud- especially not to her.)   

"Did you save the world?" He didn't mean to sound bitter. Sure it fucked him over but it hadn't fucked everyone over.

Her silence answered his question, and she took a seat beside him. Her braced leg went over his jean clad one, and her arm slipped round his shoulders.

"I'm going to miss the sunset." he said it calmly. Part of him wanted it to be a joke, but it was empty of everything. No hope, no sadness, no secret smile. Just a fact.

"We still have twelve weeks, gloomy guts." she pointed out, but she didn't sound hopeful.

"Clarke and Bellamy will work it out. They always do." _And then people die_. And Jasper's not sure whose comforting who or if they just talking now.

"Yeah. They always do." He clutches her hand and closes his eyes and think they'll be a lever at the end of this. All big decisions involved levers.  

"I'm going to miss you." And he's horrified it slipped out his mouth. If his hand wasn't joined with Raven's he'll clasp it over his mouth. But she's turning to him, and all he can see if her. Hands shaking, mouth dry, heart thumping.

Last time he felt like this he had a spear through his chest.

"Then what are you waiting for?" She had a sly smile on her face that said she'd been waiting for this for a long time. Distantly he thinks a lever should be involved.

Then he kissed her and all thoughts of levers left his mind.

It was full of just her.

**Author's Note:**

> This maybe the longest thing I've ever written (and posted), so I'm amazed you got to the end. Sorry for any mistakes.  
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
